Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts was introduced in the House of Commons on April 13, 2017. In response to the developments taking place at the federal level, provinces and territories have become active in creating provisions for their particular jurisdictions. The goal is to implement a regulatory framework in particular provinces or territories in anticipation of the legalization of non-medical cannabis in July 2018.

The three popular articles this week on HRinfodesk deal with: workplace strategies where there is a risk of impairment from cannabis, how an employer’s suspicion alone was not enough to prove an allegation of sick leave abuse and how one employer dodged a penalty after failing to adhere to re-employment obligations.

On April 13, 2017, Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, was introduced by the federal government in order to enact the Cannabis Act. You may be wondering, what does this mean for employers?

The three popular articles this week on HRinfodesk deal with: Amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Awareness and Training Regulation; overview of Bill C-45 to legalize marijuana; and Budget 2017 Bill to implement employment insurance measures.

I am increasingly being asked to speak about this subject at HR conferences, as employers are concerned about the practical implications of medical marijuana and how employees using it should be treated. The issue of marijuana in the workplace has generated a lot of attention, but what have our courts, arbitrators and tribunals said about it? A review of decisions addressing dismissal for workplace usage or possession of marijuana shows an inconsistent treatment which is consistent with the early stages that we are in.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, in French v Selkin Logging, found that an employer did not discriminate based on the ground of physical disability by refusing to allow the employee from smoking marijuana at work. The company’s zero-tolerance policy for drugs constituted a bona fide occupational requirement (BFOR).

Recently, a Mr. Lube employee tweeted a request for some marijuana to help him get through his shift. This may have gone unnoticed by the media, but it came to the attention of the York Regional Police, who used their Twitter account to respond by asking, “Can we come too?” Presumably, his employers were asking a different question: “Can we fire him?”

The media recently reported on an incident involving a British Columbia woman who admitted to a United States Customs and Border Protection officer that she had recently smoked marijuana. Although she had never been convicted of any criminal offense, this admission alone was sufficient grounds to ban her from entering the United States. The incident raised some interesting legal points, many of which will apply equally to business travellers.

Although it was clearly discriminatory on the prohibited ground of disability, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently found it could not allow an applicant to smoke his medical marijuana in liquor-licensed establishments. This discrimination could be justified because…